


Heartless: Redux

by OssaCordis



Series: The Human Heart [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Drug Abuse, Friendship, M/M, Magical Realism, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 02:46:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2134212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OssaCordis/pseuds/OssaCordis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is literally heartless, but that doesn't mean he can't feel.</p>
<p>A slash re-write of <i>Heartless</i>. Can be read as a standalone fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartless: Redux

**Author's Note:**

> The modern-day incarnations of Sherlock Holmes et al. belong to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC. The plot of this story and any original characters belong to me.

_“I think… if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina_

* * *

“It’s not possible,” the doctors say, hovering over her and the dark-haired, blanketed bundle in her arms, waving their complicated medical instruments, and shaking their heads at nurses who cluck over the pair of them with unconcealed pity.

“He’s my child,” she says. “He lives and breathes, doesn’t he? Just like everyone else. I’ll not let him be a science experiment for the rest of his life. I’m taking him home.”

And she gathers her things, and dresses with dignity, and her husband carries her bag to the car. And in her arms: her son. Her beautiful little boy. Her second child, and no less beloved for it.

Her first son, Mycroft, greets them at the door, pushing past Granny, eager to see and hold his new brother.

“He’s cold, Mummy.”

“He’s perfect,” she says. “He’s absolutely perfect. There is nothing wrong with him.”

* * *

His name is Sherlock, and there are many things wrong with him.

He doesn’t speak for five years, by which time most people have categorized him as simpleminded. He rarely cries, and smiles even less. And he has no pulse, and no heart, and should not be alive.

But he does live, and bursts into fully-formed sentences at five years, three months, and twenty-two days. He is insatiable: wants words, things, knowledge. And his brother, self-proclaimed keeper and companion, would give him everything if he could. They dig in the garden for insects and rocks, read books to each other, and play games: pirates, and complicated math puzzles devised by Mummy, and deductions, their favourite. It’s the kind of storybook childhood that is too good to be true.

It is.

Sherlock comes home from his second day of junior school with the first in a series of bloody noses. He won’t say how it happened, not even to Mummy. Later, Mycroft catches him sitting in his bedroom, staring blankly at a wall and holding a book open in his lap, though he is not reading. _Grimm’s Fairy Tales_ , opened to a well-thumbed page: _The Story of the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was_. Mycroft gently lifts the book from his brother’s cold hands and shuts it.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Sherlock says.

“Don’t lie to me. You know I can always tell when you lie.”

Sherlock turns would-be teary eyes to him. “I’m a freak.”

Mycroft grits his teeth. “Who told you that?”

“A boy at school. An older boy. He found out that I don’t have a heart, and he said I’m a freak. He… he said if I don’t have a heart, I’m not really human. I can’t feel anything. It doesn’t matter if… if people hit me. I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything.”

Mycroft’s fingers curl into his palms until his nails almost draw blood. “Yes, you can,” he says in his strictest older brother voice. “You are like everyone else, in that respect. You feel just the same as I do, or Mum, or Dad. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Sherlock nods in understanding, but secretly remains unconvinced.

* * *

He is twenty, and the music is horrible and the crowd of people is overwhelming, and he doesn’t want to be there anymore. But Sebastian and Victor are laughing and having a good time, so he supposes he is, too.

Sebastian leans over and shouts something into Victor’s ear, and Victor gives a little half-hearted smile and shrugs. Sherlock cannot hear them over the thud of the bass. It unpleasantly reverberates in his chest, and he thinks: _this must be what it’s like, to have a heartbeat. How can anyone stand it?_

Sebastian motions for him, and Sherlock pushes his way through a knot of people until he is close enough to hear.

“Come with me!”

“Where?” Sherlock shouts back.

“Just, come with me! I want to try something.”

Sebastian leads him to the toilets, Victor trailing after them and shaking his head. They all crowd inside a cubicle together. Sherlock’s ears are still dizzily ringing with music. Sebastian extracts a fifty pound note and a plastic bag of something white and powdery from his pocket. Sherlock doesn’t need to ask what it is.

“Have you ever tried this before?” Sebastian asks.

“No.” Sherlock’s voice is toneless.

“We, in the purest interests of scientific discovery, were wondering –”

“You,” Victor corrects.

“We,” Sebastian firmly says. “We were wondering what would happen, if you tried it? What with your weirdo circulatory system, and whatnot.”

Sherlock turns to leave the cubicle, and Sebastian grabs his shirtsleeve. “Oh, come on, join us. Try, at least, to look like you’re having fun.”

Sherlock, the perpetual odd man out, lets himself be drawn back.

“It will feel good.” Sebastian grins like a shark.

“Really good,” Victor agrees, with a nod and an encouraging smile. Sherlock licks his lips and nods and watches Sebastian painstakingly cut three lines on the lid of toilet. It’s disgusting. He doesn’t really want to be a part of this.

Sebastian is first, with business-like efficiency, and then Victor, indolent and heavy-lidded. Sherlock studies their technique, accepts the rolled up note, and inhales like it’s the thousandth time he’s done this.

At first… nothing. And then he feels… he feels…

He feels everything.

* * *

Four months later, Victor is dead. Overdose. His death certificate says ‘accidental’, but Sherlock knows otherwise.

“I can’t believe…” Victor cries, burying his face into Sherlock’s jacket. It’s just a few days before his death. “It’s all a lie, my whole life. My father… those poor men he killed, and the money he stole…

“Good riddance, I say. I’m… I’m happy he’s dead. I’m so. Damn. Happy.”

Sherlock sits mute and stiff in Victor’s embrace.

“I…” Victor pulls away, gags, and starts to sway. Sherlock grabs him by the nape of his neck and shoves his head between his knees. After a few dry heaves, Victor takes a shaky breath and struggles upright again. “I’m fine. I’m not going to faint.”

Sherlock nods.

“Do you… do you have any…?”

“No. I’m out,” Sherlock smoothly lies. The selfishness of an addict.

Victor shudders. “Yeah, no problem. I’m sure Sebastian has more.” He fiddles with a loose thread hanging from his jumper. “I want to thank you. I mean, it’s not great, to find out that your Dad is a murderer and a liar and a thief. Pretty… pretty terrible, actually. But I think I would rather know, than not know.”

Sherlock bites his tongue and reflects that Victor, perhaps, is wrong to thank him. In the space of forty-eight hours, he has ruined a family – other than his own – and a man is dead.

But Victor grabs the lapels of his coat and drags Sherlock in for a kiss. He is wild and desperate and Sherlock sits utterly still and unresponsive. It’s his first kiss. He hates it. And he hates that he hates it.

“Sherlock,” Victor gasps.

Sherlock pushes Victor away, a little too roughly. “I’m not interested,” he says.

Victor bursts into a fresh round of tears. “You heartless bastard,” he sobs.

Sherlock stands and walks away.

Victor is in a casket the next time Sherlock sees him. He stands over the body, so delicate and slight in a stiff grey suit, and wonders what it would be like to really be as unfeeling as he is suspected to be. It would be better, he thinks, if he would cry. But he doesn’t.

In another decade, when he is firmly established as the world’s only consulting detective, he will sometimes vaguely mention this as his first case. But he will not linger on retellings and reminiscences, for his emotions on the matter are still too deeply embedded – and raw – to touch.

* * *

Mycroft retrieves him from rehab the first and second time. The third, he sends a car and Detective Inspector Lestrade.

“Hello, Sherlock,” the detective says, a tight smile on his face as he offers a firm handshake and lofts Sherlock’s bag into the boot. They are familiar enough with each other by now that Lestrade doesn’t even flinch at Sherlock’s pulseless skin.

“Lestrade,” Sherlock replies, letting the name lazily roll off his tongue as though he does not have a single care to give in the world. He doesn’t.

The ride back to Mycroft’s house is almost unbearable. Lestrade keeps up a stream of uninteresting chatter about his family, the weather, the latest football results…. If only he would talk about murder.

They are nearly at Mycroft’s ivy-laden townhouse when Lestrade leans forward in his seat and taps Sherlock on the knee.

“Are you listening to me?”

“No.”

Lestrade sighs. “Listen. No, really. _Listen_. I’m not one to meddle in people’s private business – outside of work, that is. But, you’re breaking your brother’s heart, Sherlock. I don’t know if you understand what it feels like when…”

Sherlock’s voice is so caustic it could burn through metal. “Oh? Do tell me, Lestrade?”

Lestrade recoils. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that…”

But something inside Sherlock has shattered, and a relentless rush of words pours forth. “You think I’m not quite human. You, and all the boys and girls at Scotland Yard. There’s something not right about that Sherlock bloke, you say, when I’m not in the room. Weird, isn’t he? What. A. _Monstrosity_. And there is something unnatural about a man with no heart, I grant you. Am I alive, Lestrade? Am I dead? These are all valid questions. So what makes a human: the neurochemistry of emotions, or a beating heart?”

Lestrade’s face is carefully neutral. He knows better than to answer the question and expose himself to Sherlock’s incisive intellect. But he never implies again that Sherlock is anything less than a living, breathing, feeling human.

* * *

It’s one of the most violent crime scenes Sherlock has ever seen. Blood on every wall, and across the ceiling in thick, scarlet spatters. Fingers and toes scattered to each corner of the room. Chest wrenched open, ribs broken. Heart, missing.

Sherlock stares into the angry, red-black cavity where it should be nestled between fleshy, pink lungs. What would it look like, if he ripped his own chest open? Would the absence even be appreciable? Or would there just be smooth lungs lying flush against the sternum?

He stares for so long that even the forensics crew begin to look a little unnerved.

“Freak.” Philip Anderson hums the insult under his breath, but not so quietly that Sherlock can’t hear it. An echo of his schooldays. He unconsciously begins to draw his lips back in an angry snarl, but catches himself. He must not react. He must be as inhuman as they think he is. A machine.

“He gets off on it,” Sergeant Donovan mutters.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Anderson make a sour face. “I doubt it,” he whispers. “I heard from a doctor at St Bart’s, that since he’s heartless, he can’t feel anything… not even… arousal…”

Donovan can barely stifle her laugh.

“Oy, shut it, everybody!” Lestrade snaps, catching the very end of the whispered conversation as he enters the room. “Anything, Sherlock?”

Sherlock cannot tear his eyes away from the empty chest cavity. Something nauseous and horrible is churning inside of him. “Not yet,” he says, his voice perfectly calm.

* * *

“I read about you in medical school,” John says one day, about three weeks after he moves into 221B Baker Street.

Sherlock freezes in place at his microscope. “Oh?”

“You were – are – the boy born with no heart. I mean, they don’t publish your name in textbooks. Patient confidentiality, you know. But… I mean… you are, aren’t you?”

The doctor is more observant than Sherlock has given him credit for. He resumes his work scanning a slide of hairs under the 40x objective. “Yes.”

John smiles. “Amazing.” It’s not the first time he’s said this to Sherlock, but it never ceases to startle him. “I’m sorry if I’m intruding. But, what does it feel like?”

Sherlock violently pushes the microscope away from himself and stands up. “It feels like nothing,” he snaps. John takes a step back and lets him storm out of the kitchen, to his bedroom, where he slams the door.

It takes twenty minutes for him to calm down enough to realise that John is the first person he has ever met who assumes that being heartless feels like anything at all.

* * *

His head aches and his mouth is dry and his whole body is wracked by coughing, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to fight off John and his stethoscope.

“C’mon, Sherlock, this is ridiculous,” John says, holding up one hand in a gesture of truce. Sherlock glares at him from the other side of the kitchen table, armed with a lighter and an aerosol bottle of something almost undoubtedly flammable. John doesn’t want to test this, though.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock wheezes.

John eyebrows creep towards his hairline in disbelief. “Oh?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer because another coughing fit has started.

John edges around the table and gently relieves Sherlock of the lighter, since that seems like the fastest and easiest way to for Sherlock to wreak havoc. “I just want to listen to your lungs to make sure it’s not bronchopneumonia. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

Sherlock wilts in surrender, and John manoeuvres him into a chair.

“Deep breath,” he commands, all business as he slides the earpieces of the stethoscope into his ears, and the diaphragm against Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock shakily inhales; his exhale is clear. John carefully listens all over. It takes him a moment to realize what is missing: the steady, lub-dub whoosh of heart sounds. He is fascinated, in spite of himself. But Sherlock is growing fidgety and impatient, and it seems like an invasion of his privacy to listen any longer.

“Not bronchopneumonia,” John concedes, backing away from his victoriously smirking flatmate. “But absolutely no cases until that cough clears up a bit!”

* * *

Together they fall into a routine of domesticity, without either of them acknowledging that this is what it is. John buys the groceries and makes the tea, because the ritual of setting out cup and saucer soothes him. Sherlock pays for takeaways and washes the dishes, because he is particular about how his beakers and flasks are cleaned. They both meet with clients and solve cases, though John – if pressed – would say that Sherlock does 99% of the brainwork, and Sherlock insists that John doesn’t give himself nearly enough credit – though not in John’s earshot.

It’s the kind of normalcy that Sherlock has always thought of as unachievable. At least, for someone like him.

“You’re getting complacent,” Mycroft sneers at him one day, while John is out. It’s an unplanned, unpleasant visit. _Meddling Mycroft, still thinks I’m eight years old._ “How long do you think this can go on for, Sherlock?”

“Forever,” Sherlock says, and surprises himself.

People speak of love in terms that have no meaning for Sherlock. Butterflies in the stomach, heart palpitations, the comfortably euphoric flush of warmth when embraced by a lover’s arms…

Sherlock is cold. Sherlock is calm. It should take ages for John to catch on. It doesn’t.

* * *

“ _Incredible_. Should have done this _months_ ago,” John sighs, and flops back onto the bed. He is slick with sweat – his – and semen – both of theirs. Next to Sherlock, he is a heaving, broiling furnace. “Ohh. God. _Why_ did we ever wait?”

Sherlock is quiet.

“Hey,” John says. He props himself up on one elbow. “Hey. What’s going on in that mind of yours?”

Sherlock lifts one hand and presses it over John’s chest, directly above his heart.

“Ah.” John places his hand over Sherlock’s. “It’s fine, Sherlock.”

Sherlock makes a noncommittal noise and looks away. But John is used to holding one-sided conversations with him, and is not deterred.

“Really. I mean it.” He shifts positions, so he’s halfway leaning over Sherlock, and presses a kiss to his forehead. “It’s all fine. It always has been. I love you.”

Sherlock tilts his head back to catch John’s lips, and deepens the kiss until they are both out of breath. John releases Sherlock’s hand and lightly strokes his chest, prompting Sherlock to groan.

“You’re… you’re not already…?”

“Sorry,” Sherlock mumbles.

“No, I’m just surprised. Some of us are middle-aged, you know. Refractory period, and all that…”

“We don’t have to,” Sherlock gasps, writhing as John slides a hand down his body and grasps his cock, already erect again.

“I want to,” John smirks. “You know, never mind your heart – or lack thereof. Scientists should be coming in droves to study _this_. Superhuman erections…”

Sherlock lets out a stifled shout of laughter, in spite of himself, as John uses his mouth to work his way down his body. 

* * *

Sherlock always sleeps with his head pressed to the side of John’s ribcage. Neither of them mention it.

Nor do they discuss how, when John says, “I love you,” Sherlock smiles, but says nothing in return. 

* * *

“You machine!” John shouts, and there really isn’t anything else he could say that would hurt Sherlock more. Sherlock lets him. It needs to be like this. It will be easier.

But John – curse him – comes running back. There is a contingency plan for this, too. Sherlock knows how it is meant to go, down to the tiniest detail. He calls him, listens to his mobile ring, hears John on the other end of the line.

“Hey, Sherlock, are you ok?”

His throat is closing in on itself and he can feel tears pooling in his eyes. Real tears, not the ones he learned so many years ago to mimic real emotion. “Turn around and walk back the way you came now.”

Why is this so difficult?

Sometimes, at night, when everyone but him is asleep and London is quiet and his mind is restless, he thinks back to his childhood. And he thinks of all the unkind people he has encountered through the years, and the ways he was unkind to them in turn. It’s easy to be cruel. It’s so much harder to care.

He jumps from the roof of St Bart’s. He hears John’s scream, he lies still and cold on the pavement. John grasps at his wrist, frantically searching for a pulse he knows is not there. Being dead, as it turns it out, is something Sherlock excels at. He lets other people cart his body away on a stretcher and pretends he is not there, and it does not hurt.

* * *

Hours later, when he lets himself into Mycroft’s house in the early, pre-dawn hours of the morning, he begins to weep all over again. The emotions he’s never quite allowed himself to fully feel well up from some deep, confusing place within. The pain is excruciating.

Mycroft is sitting in the shadows of his kitchen, glass of untouched scotch in hand. “I told you,” he says, with not even a hint of smugness in his voice. “All those years ago. You have no special advantage over the rest of humanity. Being heartless has never actually made you _heartless_.”

“But… I… I’m not the same as you,” Sherlock insists. “Caring is not an advantage, et cetera, Mycroft. You _wish_ you were like me.” His speech is rather ruined when he has to blot his face with an already sodden handkerchief.

Mycroft comes to stand by his brother, and squeezes his shoulder. “Brother mine, I can still tell when you lie.”

* * *

There is no precedent for how to act upon returning from the dead. Sherlock isn’t sure how he is meant to feel, or the expression he should wear on his face. Contrite? Ecstatic? Sombre?

He walks into the restaurant and pauses, surveying the crowd of happy diners. They are pink-cheeked from downing too many glasses of wine, and laughing and grinning at one another. _What a gift, to be an ordinary human being_ , Sherlock thinks. But, _no_. _John thinks I am fine, just as I am._

John sits alone at a table, waiting for someone. His posture is tense, and he fiddles with something small on the table. Sherlock weaves his way between waiters, torn between surprising John, and cautiously hanging back to watch.

The decision is made for him when a petite blonde woman sits across from John. She beams at him, adoringly, and John’s smile is incandescent in return. The object in his hand is a ring box.

If Sherlock had a heart, it would stop at the sight.

That is when John sees him. He pushes his chair back from the table so violently that it almost tips over as he staggers to his feet. The woman whips her head around, mouth hanging open in shock.

“John,” Sherlock whispers. “I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> There's just something about the idea of being 'heartless' but not, you know, _heartless_ that is really fascinating to me. I'm not entirely sure I'm done playing with the original prompt just yet. There might be more. We'll see.


End file.
